The mission of our troops is wholly defensive, President
George H. W. Bush intoned as elements of the 82d Airborne and US Air Force arrived in
Saudi Arabia to defend it against an Iraqi invasion. Hopefully, they will not be needed long. That was 8
August 1990.

Thirteen years
later, the Americans are finally withdrawing from the land of Mecca and Medinaand
the long, strange war against Saddam Hussein is essentially over. When it began, no one
thought it would last 13 years, that it would set the stage for a global conflict unlike
any in history, that it would fracture the Atlantic Alliance and mortally wound the United
Nations. But it did. As the postwar period begins, it is largely left to the United
States to face these realities and brace for new challenges. To avoid making similar
mistakes in the aftermath of this war, the United States should be guided by these
Three Rs: Rebuilding, Reviewing, and Reforming.

The Beginning

As others have
explained elsewhere at great length, the forces of Arab nationalism and Islamic
fundamentalism seldom work together. However, in a very real sense it was Saddam
Husseinonce the personified definition of Arab nationalismthat catapulted
fundamentalist al Qaeda into a terror superpower and set in motion a series of events that
led to the bloodiest day on American soil since the Civil War.

By invading Kuwait
in the summer of 1990, Saddam left the defenseless Saudis with two optionscut a deal
and surrender, or allow the Americans to dig

46/47

in. The Saudis chose
the latter, hopeful that the American deployment would be short and small. Of course,
those hopes werent realized. The initial deployment of a few hundred troops swelled
to some 600,000 in preparation for Operation Desert Storm. Kuwait was liberated and Saddam
was weakened, but Washington declared a cease-fire before the American juggernaut could
destroy key units of the Republican Guard, which were vital to Saddams survival.
Historian Derek Leebaert calls the war a tactical success misread as strategic
triumph.1

Deflecting
criticisms of the wars untidy conclusion in their book A World Transformed,
Bush and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, argued in 1998 that shutting down
the ground war at the hundred-hour mark was the right thing to do. The United States
could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land, they
concluded.2 Of course, thats effectively what
happened, at least in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and his followers.

In a sense,
occupation was inevitable after the war; perhaps the United States ended up occupying the
wrong country. Since a wounded Saddam could not be left unattended and an oil-rich Saudi
Arabia could not be left unprotected, US troops took up permanent residence in the Saudi
kingdom. The presence of foreign troops in the Muslim holy land galvanized al Qaeda, which
carried out the attacks of 11 September 2001, which triggered Americas global war on
terror, which led inevitably back to Iraq, which is where America finds itself today. When
viewed from this side of history, the events between 1990 and 2003 look like something out
of a Greek tragedyeach decision fateful, each step leading inexorably to the very
thing we hoped to prevent.

This is not to say
that the first Bush Administration is to blame for the tragedy. The elder Bush crafted a
historic diplomatic and military campaign, hewed to the UN mandate, and took a calculated
risk that Saddam would fall. He wasnt the first President to make such a
calculation, but like Kim, Castro, and others, Saddam survived. To finish him off,
Washington waged what came to be known as low-grade war. It consisted of
sanctions, CIA operations, and weekly or even daily air attacks on targets of opportunity
such as radar posts, SAM sites, and other facilities on the extreme periphery of Saddam
Husseins power.

Capitalizing on
Washingtons preoccupation with Iraq, al Qaeda and its partners launched a
global guerilla war against the United States in 1993. Perfecting asymmetrical warfare,
they hit America in unexpected places and used unexpected tacticsa van full of
explosives parked under the World Trade Center, foreign-trained gangs in Mogadishu, a
truck bomb outside the Khobar

47/48

Towers, simultaneous
bombings outside lightly guarded embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, a bomb-laden rubber boat
alongside USS Cole, and of course, civilian airliners as guided missiles in
Manhattan and Washington. Only then did Washington muster a real response to the enemy,
smashing al Qaedas spawning grounds in Afghanistan and ousting the medieval Taliban
regime.

More connective
tissue between the Gulf Wars loose ends and the attacks of 9/11 was exposed on the
road to Kabul: Saudi Arabia was funneling money to the Taliban$100 million in 1997
alone and millions more in daily oil shipments, as former CIA officer Robert Baer
explained in a revealing Atlantic Monthly piece. In fact, Baer found that the
Saudis transferred $500 million to al Qaeda over the past decade.3 The reason? It was a simple matter of insurance. By
shoveling cash and petroleum to al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts, Riyadh struck a tacit deal
with bin Laden: Well keep the money flowing as long as you keep your jihad away from
the king. Rather than attacking the kingdom, al Qaeda attacked the kingdoms
defender, which leads us back to the rationale for Americas deployments in Saudi
ArabiaSaddam Hussein.

The Bush
Doctrines principle of preemption was tailor-made for Baathist Iraqa country
with growing ties to terror, an underground unconventional weapons program, and the means
and motives to mete out revenge on the United States. As a matter of common sense
and self-defense, President George W. Bush explained in a 2002 national security
document, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully
formed.4 The strengths and weaknesses of this
doctrine could be the subject of a book (and no doubt will be the subject of many). The
purpose of this article is not to dissect the Bush Doctrine.5
Suffice it to say that the Bush Doctrine is idealistic, bold, even risky. However, when
analysts conclude that it is too idealistic, too bold, or too risky to work, one
cant help but compare it to the doctrine of nuance, realism, and stability that
guided prior administrations and died a violent death on 11 September 2001.

Rebuilding:
Patience is a Virtue

As US troops have
learned in the months since the statues fell in Baghdad, rebuilding Iraq is no easy
taskbut neither is it beyond the realm of possibility. As long as the American
people stay patient and focused, the American military can succeed in its important
postwar mission. To doubt this is to dismiss what MacArthur and Marshall achieved in Japan
and Western Europe after World War II. Yet the skeptics are quick to point out that
21st-century America is a different country than that of the 1940s. After all, Presidents
are more skittishand the American people more squeamishtoday than they were
after World War II. For evidence, look no further than the rapid withdrawal of US forces
from Lebanon in the 1980s and Somalia and Haiti in the 1990s, when rebuilding or
peacekeeping missions turned messy. As RAND international security analyst James Dobbins
observed in a Washington Post interview, Weve done these things quickly
and weve done them well, but weve never done them quickly and well.6

48/49

However, the attacks
of 9/11 have altered the way America and its leaders view open-ended military missions.
Moreover, contrary to the critics, the United States is not out of practice when it comes
to rebuilding failed states. The ongoing nation-building operations in Afghanistan and the
Balkans illustrate that America still has the capacity to be patient.

From Bosnia to
Baghdad

In 1991, Slobodan
Milosevics henchmen began a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Croatia. By
1995, their war of attrition and siege had erased 250,000 people and displaced another two
million. The lopsided war haunted two Presidents and divided their administrations. Under
the elder Bush, it was Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger who worried about the
shadow of Vietnam, as historian David Halberstam writes in War in a Time of Peace.
Early in the Clinton presidency, it was Secretary of State Warren Christopher who labeled
Bosnia, the problem from hell. Defense Secretary William Perry warned of the
possibility of a guerilla war in Southeast Europe. And after the nation-building debacle
in Mogadishu, official Washington had little faith in Americas capacity to do any
good in the ethnic wars and general chaos that roiled the post-Cold War period.7

When the White House
finally shook off the doom-saying and launched robust air strikes against Serbian
paramilitaries in 1995 (in conjunction with Bosnian and Croat ground operations), the war
came to an abrupt end. Yet the White House was extremely anxious about public support for
a long-term peacekeeping operation, so anxious that the President promised to have the
troops out within a year. That was in December 1995. The troops are still there, of
course, and the peace is still holding. In fact, the armistice has now held longer than
the war itself lasted.

A similar formula
has worked in Kosovo. Less than five years ago, Milosevics terror squads were
rampaging through the tiny Albanian enclave of Serbia, purging 850,000 ethnic Albanians
and killing thousands more. Defying the odds, a US-led NATO force evicted Milosevic and
returned all 850,000 refugees to Kosovothe only case in modern history where a
systematic removal of ethnic groups has been reversed.

Today, Milosevic is
pacing in a jail cell, awaiting his sentence for a decade of war crimes; the Kosovars are
home; Serbia is a democracy; the Balkans are more stable than they have been since Tito;
and, not coincidentally, there are some 7,000 US troops keeping the peace. They arrived in
1999, and it doesnt appear that they will be leaving anytime soon.

A New Country

Some have criticized
Americas postwar Afghan operation as halfhearted. Some even claim that Washington
has abandoned Kabul. While theres much left to do, America has hardly abandoned
Afghanistan.

49/50

In 2002 alone, the
United States poured $620 million into Afghanistan. By the end of this year, Washington
plans to invest another $820 million there. Much of the Pentagons Afghanistan
outlays have been devoted to provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs), military units which
work with civilian organizations to rebuild key infrastructure beyond Kabul.8 According to the Congressional Research Service,
The objective of the PRTs is to provide safe havens for international aid
workers to help with reconstruction and to extend the writ of the Kabul government
throughout Afghanistan. PRTs are already at work in Gardez, Bamiyan, and Konduz;
another five to seven will be launched in other cites in the months ahead.9

There are just under
10,000 US troops in Afghanistan; they are joined by roughly the same number of allied
troops, most of them from NATO countries. In addition to their PRT work, they are training
Afghanistans new army, hunting al Qaeda, and protecting the nascent Afghan
government. US forces literally saved Afghan leader Hamid Karzais life during an
assassination attempt in September 2002.

Still, the work is
far from over. Karzai warns that the police and army remain weak. Lawlessness still reigns
beyond major urban areas. Not coincidentally, there has been an upsurge in Taliban
activity. Many countries have failed to make good on their pledges, most notably Germany
(which has 71 percent of its pledge unpaid), France (72 percent), and Japan (73 percent).10

Even though the
postwar peace is not perfect, however, the operation is a success: First and foremost, al
Qaeda no longer has a base of operations. The Taliban is no longer in power. Almost two
million Afghan refugees have come home. And as one of those returning refugees put it,
Life is good here. . . . This is a new country.11

The Yardstick of
Yesterday

That former refugee
understands something that the pessimists in America do not: The measure of success in the
Balkans and Afghanistan is not Jeffersonian democracy or postwar Germany or Japanand
its certainly not perfection. Its simply yesterday. For him and millions of
others, yesterday in Afghanistan was so brutal, so horrific that they fled. But today, the
country is new. For America, yesterday in Afghanistan was so deformed that it spawned mass
murder in Manhattan. But today, the Afghan government is friendly, and the Afghan
countryside is being purged of al Qaeda.

And so it is with
Iraq. The measure of US success or failure is a simple comparison between today and the
situation before Saddam Hussein fell: Are the American people more secure with Saddam
Hussein in power or deposed; are the Iraqi people freer and better off under Saddams
heel or under interim allied stewardship; and is the region closer to stability or chaos
now that Saddam is gone? We must revisit these questions often to gauge our progress. If
the answer is no, then the mission is failing; but if the answer is yes, then it is
succeeding.

50/51

By that yardstick,
Americas rebuilding mission is succeeding, some weeks faster than others, in some
cities better than others. Much of it began even before the collapse of Saddams
regime. Just days after entering Iraq, the allies were repairing water-pumping stations
and unloading tons of food and other supplies. Less than a week after the liberation of
Baghdad, US forces hosted a job fair in the Iraqi capital. And by day seven of life after
Saddam, joint US-Iraqi teams were patrolling the streets of major Iraqi cities.

The lifting of UN
sanctions in May opened the gates to a steady flow of aid and dollars, especially
petrodollars. The wealth generated by Iraqs oil wells is critical to the rebuilding
process. Because of Saddams cynical manipulation of sanctions, Baathist Iraq pumped
only about two million barrels of oil per day. That number is sure to rise with the help
of foreign investment. Indeed, before Saddam plunged Iraq into a quarter-century of war,
Iraq was producing 3.5 million barrels per day.

Postwar Iraq needs
every bit of the wealth generated by its oil. The rebuilding effort could cost $20 billion
per year. Iraqs modern infrastructure never recovered from the 1990-1991 war. A New
York Times investigation found that not even Baghdad had a steady, dependable
supply of electricity after the US-led liberation of Kuwait. Water purifying plants,
essential in the desert nations of the modern Middle East, fell into disrepair. Saddam
allowed hospitals to import less than a tenth of the supplies they imported prior to 1990.12 All of this privation had more to do with Saddams
spite than with international sanctions. The UN allowed Baghdad to trade oil for food and
medicine, and Saddam had plenty of wealth and annual income to rebuild postwar Iraqs
electrical and water-filtration plants. Yet he shunted much of the food to the military,
hid Iraqs wealth in foreign banks and underground vaults, and used black-market oil
profits to build 48 new palaces.13

However, restoring
water, oil, and electricity service is only part of the rebuilding mission. Under the
umbrella of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Iraqs political, religious, and
ethnic groups are meeting regularly to create a post-Baathist government. They already
agree on the fundamentalsa federal system, representative democracy, a secular
state. But as one delegate sighed at a post-Saddam planning conference, We are not
ready to handle this yet.14

To understand why,
consider how deformed Iraqi society is after a quarter-century of Saddam Hussein: Hundreds
of thousands of children were orphaned by Saddams wars. Tens of thousands were
orphaned by death squads, which carried out an internal genocide. Saddam became their
father and god, his eyes watching them everywhere: With our souls and our
blood, they pledged each morning at school, we sacrifice for Saddam. We will
sacrifice ourselves for you, O Saddam.15
Children who refused to join Saddams youth paramilitary gangs were locked up by the
hundreds in jails. It was the US military that set them free.

The deformities are
not just figurative. After the Gulf War rout, many Iraqi men lost their zeal for military
service. In one episode of retribution, Saddam ordered his secret police and surgeons to
remove the ears of all deserters. For three

51/52

days in 1994,
surgeons worked around the clock slicing off ears.16 Other
examples of mass-torture are too brutal to discuss here.

Simply put, it
should come as no surprise that pockets of Iraq are violent or unstable or enraged. A
quarter-century of anger is being released by an oppressed people. At the same time, the
remnants of Saddams regime are doing the only thing they know: terrorizing and
killing. Keeping this in perspective seems more difficult for American journalists than
Iraqi citizens. As an Iraqi cab driver told TheNew York Times, It may
be a little chaotic, but its our chaos.17

It
will take time, money, and patience to transform this disfigured country, to stabilize
Ramadi, Fallujah, and Iraqs other hotspots, to smother the Baathist leftovers and
their imported jihadis. The American people must be prepared to maintain a presence in
Iraq for at least as long as the troops have been in Bosnia and perhaps as long as
they were in Saudi Arabia. And they must be prepared for what lies ahead in these years of
rebuilding: guerilla attacks, suicide bombings, Mogadishu-style shootouts, assassination
attempts against post-Saddam government officials, foreign interference. As Lieutenant
General David McKiernan warned during a flurry of US counter-guerilla operations in June,
Iraq will be a combat zone for some time.18

Even so, by the
yardstick of yesterday, Iraq is slowly getting better. And it appears that the vast
majority of the Iraqi people, beleaguered though they may be, would rather live in a
combat zone for a while than in a torture chamber forever.

Reviewing
Stand

It will also take
allies to repair Iraq, which brings us to a second critical ingredient for postwar
successreviewing and reevaluating Americas role in international institutions.

Soon after the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait, the world came together to isolate Saddam Hussein. The Soviet Union
and the United States stood together. Arab states stood up against a fellow Arab regime.
Seemingly the entire world agreed that Iraqs invasion and annexation of Kuwait
should be reversed. In a word, the United Nations was, well, united. Thirteen years later,
the opposite is true.

As it was throughout
the Cold War, the United Nations is again divided. But unlike before, the divisions
arent a function of superpower standoff. In fact, they are the byproduct of tensions
within the transatlantic community.

Last November, the
UN Security Council unanimously agreed that Iraq had failed to provide accurate and full
disclosure of its nuclear, chemical, and biological programs, had repeatedly obstructed
access to weapon sites, and was in material breach of UN disarmament demands. But
resolving only to be unresolved, as Churchill once said, the Security Council refused to
explicitly authorize the military action to bring Iraq into compliance. Worried that
Washington would use the UN to legitimize the unilateral and preemptive use of
force, French President Jacques Chirac blocked any such language.19

52/53

So for five months,
UN inspectors haplessly asked Iraq to account for its known caches of special
weapons, which included 10,000 liters of anthrax, 80 tons of mustard gas, thousands
of mustard bombs, and uncounted amounts of sarin and VX nerve agent. Baghdad never came
clean. (Thankfully and mysteriously, it never used its WMD arsenal, either. The fact that
these stocks have not yet been found in the wars aftermath may be troubling, but it
does not prove that they were imagined.) In mid-March 2003, when Britain and the United
States called the question and returned to the UN for authorization, France and Germany
organized an opposition against their erstwhile allies, and the rest of the Security
Council shrugged.

As British Prime
Minister Tony Blair warned at the time, the consequences could range from paralysis
of the UN to a world in which there are rival poles of powerthe US and
its allies in one corner; France, Germany, and Russia in the other. In Blairs
view, the prewar behavior of Paris and Berlin will trigger the biggest impulse to
[American] unilateralism there could ever be.20 And his prediction appears to be accurate: A year ago, Washington
was excoriated for contemplating military action against Iraq without seeking UN approval.
Yet when Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the UN for that approval, he was
excoriated for daring to ask. It seems unlikely that this Administration will go through
such a charade again, at least not on a matter of grave importance. As President Bush
soberly explained before the bombs began to fall on Baghdad, When it comes to our
security, we dont need anybodys permission. That does not bode well for
the UN or proponents of multilateralism, most of whom seem to reside in France and
Germany.

Of course, this
transatlantic disconnect is nothing new. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed more than 170
years ago, An American leaves his country with a heart swollen with pride; on
arriving in Europe he at once finds out that we are not so engrossed by the United States
and the great people which inhabits them as he had supposed, and this begins to annoy
him.21

Europeans began to
appreciate their cousins across the Atlantic in the 20th century, although they continued
to perceive Americans as proud, if not arrogant. Still, they recognized that US power was
a force for good during the World Wars and a source of stability and security during the
Cold War. What is different today is that Western Europes largest countries believe
that US power is a destabilizing, destructive force.

What triggered this
transformation? In his landmark essay on the subject in Policy Review, Robert Kagan
of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concluded that its a simple matter
of power and weakness. When the United States was weak, it practiced the strategies
of indirection, the strategies of weakness; now that the United States is powerful, it
behaves as powerful nations do, according to Kagan. When the European great
powers were strong, they believed in strength and martial glory. Now, they see the world
through the eyes of weaker powers.22

53/54

Still others, from
US senators to academics, argue that the French and Germans were simply using Iraq to send
the Bush Administration a message. Citing everything from the Kyoto Treaty and landmines
to the International Criminal Court and the lack of cooperation in Afghanistan, they
rationalize the Franco-German blocking maneuver as a natural, even appropriate, reaction
to the Bush Administrations independent bent. Upon closer examination, it seems that
both their timing and their aim were off the mark.

Simply put,
Americas independent streak wasnt born when the Bush Administration came into
office. After all, Kyoto was pronounced dead on arrival by the US Senate in the 1990s. In
1998, the United States (governed not by George W. Bush, but by Bill Clinton) was one of
just seven countries to oppose the ICC. Clinton reversed himself at the eleventh hour of
his presidency, but the US Senate wouldnt budge. The fact that Bush ended the
charade was just a reflection of the will of Congress.

In 1997, it was
President Clinton who opposed the Landmine Treaty by arguing, rightly, There is a
line that I simply cannot cross, and that line is the safety and security of our men and
women in uniform.23 Unlike their French and German counterparts, American troops stand
guard in places like the 38th Parallel, where landmines are a matter of life and death.

If Paris used the
Iraq crisis to express its frustration with American arrogance, one cant help but
recall the prewar behavior of the French. It was Chirac who threatened the East Europeans
for daring to side with Bush rather than him on Iraq. These countries are very rude
and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too quickly with the
Americans, he snarled. Their situation is very delicate. If they wanted to
diminish their chances of joining the [European Union], they couldnt have chosen a
better way.24 If nothing else, Chiracs tirade
makes it clear that America doesnt have a monopoly on arrogance.

Finally, if the
French and German governments waited until March 2003 to express their hurt feelings for
being included in Afghanistan after Kabul had fallen, one has to look no further than
Kosovo to understand why. A study by The Economist conducted during the Kosovo War
revealed that only ten percent of NATOs European combat aircraft were capable of
precision bombing.25 As Lieutenant General Michael Short,
USAF, who helped plan the Kosovo air campaign, bluntly concluded, Weve got an
A Team and a B Team now.26

However, the
important thing to remember is at least we have a team. It may be handicapped by
infighting and a poor division of labor, but NATO is still a teamand it is an
important tool of US power. President Bush and his advisors must keep that in mind as they
remove the postwar wreckage. As Churchill counseled, in victory, magnanimity.

If Germany and
France dont always behave like friends, the challenge is to make sure they
dont behave like enemies. With that objective in mind, Bush is following
Churchills counsel. We welcome and we need the help, advice, and wisdom of
friends and allies, Bush said during his postwar trip to Europe. Even

54/55

so, he couldnt
resist the opportunity to offer a rejoinder to Chiracs prewar pressuring of Eastern
Europe: You have not come all this way, through occupations and tyranny and brave
uprisings, he explained during a speech in Poland, only to be told that you
must now choose between Europe and America.27

The Bush
Administration has proven it can carry and wield a big stick; now it must learn to speak
softly, especially across the Atlantic. As Kagan observes, The worlds sole
superpower doesnt need to hold grudges.28 Instead,
Washington should emphasize the positive, downplay the negative, and perhaps avoid
situations and venues where differences can force a test of willsall of which means
US coalition-building will increasingly be conducted outside the UN Security Council and
other places where the French hold sway. The Americans are quick learners in this regard:
Recall their deft use of NATOs Defense Planning Committee (DPC) to approve the
deployment of AWACS aircraft, Patriot missiles, and anti-chemical weapons gear to Turkey.
Paris had blocked the request in NATOs North Atlantic Council, but since the French
do not participate in NATOs military committees, the Alliance was able to answer
Turkeys call for help without tearing itself apart. Shifting the decision to the DPC
enabled the US-led majority to assist Turkey, while not forcing France to compromise its
position.

NATO has never been
a rubber stamp, but unlike the UN it is a readymade structure where Washington can round
up a posse. These alliances within the alliance automatically transform any US operation
from a unilateral action into a combined endeavor, giving Washington diplomatic cover and
the sort of logistical cooperation that is often critical to speed, surprise, and success
in the battlespace.

After 9/11, NATO
nations were among the first to rally around Washington. Likewise, before the Iraq War,
Washington relied on decades of cooperation, interoperability, and training with key NATO
partners to prepare the battlefield. While Germany, France, Belgium, and Turkey
equivocated, Spain, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, and the Czech Republic fought on the
diplomatic front. (Recall the Azores Summit on the very eve of war.) Poland and Britain
did that and much more, sending thousands of troops to fight alongside the Americans and
Australians. During the war, Turkey opened its airspace and overland routes to US forces.

When the guns fell
silent, the German government offered to repair key Iraqi infrastructure and even the
French agreed that NATO should play a role in postwar Iraq. Built around a NATO core,
troops and technical experts from 39 nations are now helping to rehabilitate Iraq. Britain
is overseeing a zone in southern Iraq. Poland is heading up peacekeeping duties in
northern Iraq. Italy is sending 3,000 peacekeepers and policemen, the Netherlands 1,100,
Denmark 400. Other peacekeeping troops are coming from future NATO members Romania,
Bulgaria, and Estonia, and NATO aspirants Ukraine, Albania, and Muslim Azerbaijan.

Likewise, President
Bush has turned to NATO to form the core of his Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI),
which will give Washington and its allies the diplomatic and military means needed to
intercept weapons of mass destruc-

55/56

tion and their
precursors while in transit. The United States, Poland, Spain, other key NATO allies, and
Australia are already refining the specifics of the landmark PSI. Over time,
according to Bush, we will extend this partnership as broadly as possible to keep
the worlds most destructive weapons away from our shores and out of the hands of our
common enemies.29

The
Reformation

Baathist Iraq and
Taliban Afghanistan were two such enemies, but many others live and breed in a troubled
swath of earth that stretches from Pakistans lawless mountains to Libyas
terrorist-infested deserts. Waging and winning a war on terror means that the regimes in
this arc of crisis must be reformed. However, there are different tools of reform. Simply
put, just as regimes come in many forms, so too do the tools of regime change.

Regardless of
ones view on the justification or rationale for the Pentagons post-9/11
campaign of campaigns, the use of military force has been effective. Operations against al
Qaeda have netted hundreds of prisoners, killed uncounted operatives, and remarkably
foiled any follow-on attacks against the US homeland. The Taliban regime is gone, as is
Saddam Husseins regime; both were cooperating to varying degrees with the architects
of the global guerilla war against America.

In the Philippines,
teams of US troops are conducting what the diplomats call counterterrorism training
missions with the Philippine army. But if its training, its on-the-job
training. As in Afghanistan, the US-backed force has smashed and scattered the enemy.
Likewise, in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and other former Soviet republics, US troops
are training local forces to clean out al Qaeda and its kindred movements, while
constructing lily pad bases that will extend Americas reach.

From their perch in
Djibouti, US intelligence agents and military taskforces are conducting operations in and
around Yemen (recall the Predator strike on al Qaeda commanders in November 2002),
monitoring terrorist activity in the lawless lands of eastern Africa, and intercepting
suspicious ships transiting the vital waterways around the Horn of Africa (recall the
US-Spanish operation that tracked and briefly impounded a Yemen-bound North Korean vessel,
serving as the PSIs template).

But there is more
happening than military campaigns and mini-wars. In Pakistan, for instance,
Washingtons coercive diplomacy has converted President Pervez Musharraf from the
Talibans only friend into a dependable ally in the war on terror. That was a lot to
ask of the government that created the Taliban, but Musharrafs choice was simple: He
could agree to Washingtons demands and reap the financial and political benefits, or
he could reject them and reap the whirlwind. He chose wisely. Today, US forces roam freely
along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, conducting search and destroy missions on both
sides of the bordersometimes deep inside Pakistani territory, and sometimes with the

Washington is
putting just as much pressure on Syria. We now know that Syria provided safe haven to
Saddams henchmen and quite possibly to his weapons of mass destruction. The Syrians
sent military supplies and volunteers to fight for Saddams dying regime. Damascus
could send far more and far worse in the months ahead. Syria controls Lebanons Bekaa
Valley, which is a training ground for Hezbollah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And according to US Undersecretary of State for
Arms Control John Bolton, Syria has stockpiled VX nerve agent and sarin gas.30

They should
review their actions and their behavior, not only with respect to who gets haven in Syria
and weapons of mass destruction, but especially the support of terrorist activity,
Secretary Powell said of Syrias rulers after the liberation of Iraq.31 Still other warning shots came from the White House and
Pentagon, and Damascus is showing the first signs of reforming: During a recent meeting
with Syrian leader Bashar Assad in Damascus, US Representative Darrell Issa reported that
Assad will not harbor any war criminals and will expel any that are here.32
Even so, the terror camps are still open. Moreover, firefights have broken out between US
forces and Syrian border guards as the Americans scour western Iraq for Baathist guerillas
and Saddams inner circle. Like Pakistans Musharraf in 2001, Assad must either
change his behavior or face the end of his regime. In neighboring Iraq, he has a sobering
example of what the latter would look like.

Coercive diplomacy
is also bearing fruit with the Palestinians and Israelis. For the first time since the
collapse of the 1998 Wye River agreements, both sides seem to be compromising and the
spasmodic violence is ebbing, if not ending. A new Palestinian Prime Ministerwho
probably wouldnt have been chosen were it not for Bushs decision in 2002 to
call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by
terror33is guaranteeing what Arafat said was
beyond his power, an end to terror attacks. And after agreeing to Palestinian statehood,
Israels hawkish government is dismantling the settlements that so inflame
Palestinian anger.

Washington is
playing hardball with Saudi Arabia as well, as evidenced by the abrupt withdrawal of US
forces from the kingdom. Even so, unlike Pakistan, Riyadh cannot to be cajoled with cash.
And its oil reserves guarantee that it wont be pushed around by blustery words.

Saudi Arabia
accounts for the largest percentage of US oil imports from the Persian Gulf, but fully 75
percent of Americas oil imports come from somewhere other than the Gulf, which means
the United States can adjust. However, 36 percent of Western Europes and 76 percent
of Japans oil imports originate in the Gulfand the Saudis are the prime
source.34 If Saudi Arabias contribution
to the worlds oil supply were cut off, according to Baer, crude
petroleum could quite realistically rise from around $40 a barrel today to as much as $150
a barrel.35 Hence, even if the United States were to
forgo Saudi oil, global depend-

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ence on Riyadh would not change. That
presents a long-term problem for Americas interdependent and interconnected economy.

Saudi Arabia may not
be Americas enemy, but given its actions and inaction over the last 13 years, it is
certainly not Americas friend. At best, Riyadh and Washington are independent actors
brought together by self-interest and the invisible, if inexorable, hand of the market. At
worst, one is a pusher and the other is an addict. Either way, the withdrawal of US forces
from the kingdom serves Americas interests in the Gulfand so does the
stationing of troops and bases on Saudi Arabias borders.

On the other side of
Iraqand the other end of the Islamic spectrum sits Shiite Iran, which a recent
State Department report called the most active state sponsor of terrorism on
earth.36 Tehran provides Hezbollah and a host of
others with funding, training, and weapons. Contrary to the critics, Hezbollah isnt
just Israels problem. In fact, a full year before the attacks on
Manhattan and Washington, the FBI arrested 23 members and supporters of Hezbollah in
suburban North Carolina, of all places. Prior to 9/11, Hezbollah had killed more Americans
than any other terrorist group.37

Inside Iran, the
mullahs are racing to build a nuclear bomb. A year ago, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
concluded, ominously, The nexus between weapons of mass destruction and terrorist
states that have those weaponsand that have relationships with terrorist
networksis a particularly dangerous circumstance for the world.38 We may soon see just how dangerous. After all,
Tehrans newest partner in the terror trade is al Qaeda. According to Rumsfeld,
Theres no question but that there have beenand are todaysenior al
Qaeda leaders in Iran. And theyre busy.39 Intelligence
officials believe al Qaeda operatives inside Iran planned the May 2003 attacks against US
targets in Saudi Arabia. Their methods and practices may be different, but their goals and
enemies are the same.

Even so, there are
signs that elements inside Irans two-headed government are trying to expunge al
Qaeda. Of course, still other elements are working to destabilize Iraq and hence derail
the postwar peace. Hashemi Rafsanjani, who previously held the post of President and is
now chairman of the countrys so-called Expediency Board, recently
concluded that the US presence in the Middle East is worse than Saddams
weapons of mass destruction.40
And hes right. For those elements that preach jihad and teach terror inside Iran,
the deployment of US troops in neighboring Iraq poses nothing short of an existential
threat, which is why they are working so hard to undermine the postwar rebuilding process.

During the war,
Tehran slipped thousands of members of its Badr Brigade across the border. Together with
Iranian agents, these guerilla fighters hope to transplant Irans Islamic revolution
into Iraq. Telltale signs of their handiwork were on display in the springtime
demonstrations that erupted spontaneously throughout southern Iraq. What major
media outlets and Middle East experts failed to mention (or grasp), as Lawrence Kaplan
observed in The New Republic, was that the anti-American demonstrations in
Najaf and Baghdad were orches-

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trated by the
Tehran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an organization that
seeks exactly what its title suggests. In fact, the evidence was literally written
all over the demonstrators. Many of the placards the protestors waved were written
in Farsi, not Arabic, Kaplan explained.41 Iraqisincluding Shiite
Iraqisare Arabs and speak Arabic. Iranians are Persian and speak Farsi. Similar
evidence of Iranian involvement was found in Karbala and elsewhere.

Of course, two can
play this game. In late May, The Washington Post reported that the Bush
Administration had begun exploring ways to support a popular uprising that would bring
down the Iranian government.42 By June, Tehran was blaming the United
States for a wave of pro-democracy protests and strikes across the country. Given the deep
divisions in Irans government, growing resentment among the Iranian people, and the
track record of the Bush Administration, the smart money would be with Washington when it
comes to replacing governments. According to Rumsfeld, A vocal minority clamoring to
transform Iraq in Irans image will not be permitted to do so.43
Indeed, the mullahs could end up controlling a mayors office in Najaf and losing
everything in Iran.

Tomorrow

In all of
thisfrom the carrots and sticks in Pakistan and Syria, to the ongoing hunt for al
Qaeda in Afghanistan, to the proxy war with Iran, to the transformation of Iraq, to the
chess game with Saudi Arabiawe catch a glimpse of the next phase in the war on
terror. Blending the surprise and lethality of traditional warfare with the tension and
stalemate of the Cold War, what lies ahead is something altogether differenta
colder, harsher strain of conflict.

The United States is
well suited for this colder war. Since 12 September 2001, America has been on
guard, alternately showing restraint and resolve, the clenched fist of war and the open
hand of friendship. Nor is this the first time the American people have called on their
political and military leaders to be ambidextrous: Recall the long test of wills with
Moscow which began with a humanitarian airlift into a divided Berlin, spawned a war in
Korea that still hasnt ended, cracked open the door to doomsday in Cuba, taught us
hard lessons in Southeast Asia, and ended with celebrations in a united Berlin.

It took longer than
13 years for us to arrive at the crossroads embodied by postwar Iraq, and it may take
longer than 13 years to move beyond it. It is, as Churchill intoned in
1946, a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with primacy in power is also
joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future.44

Alan W. Dowd is a research fellow
at the Hudson Institute and director of the Hudson Institutes headquarters in
Indianapolis. The author of more than 200 articles, Dowds work has appeared in such
publications as Policy Review, The World & I, The Washington Times,
The Jerusalem Post, National Review Online, American Legion Magazine,
and other national publications.